Art
by mayonaka-ni-sakayume
Summary: Oneshot. Deidara can't sleep, and it's contagious. Hints of a pairing, if you care to read it that way.


Art

By mayonaka-ni-sakayume (new penname, woot.)

((Another one-shot, this time with my favorite Akatsuki members. May you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And you all know what I own (a guitar, a few shirts, and an Otogakure hitai-ate) and what I don't (Naruto) so I'll spare you the disclaimer.))

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Sasori has not often endured the company of humans, and so he isn't sure whether it's fair to be annoyed right now. Maybe, after all, most people hum when they can't sleep. Maybe the habit is a common one. One not confined only to Deidara, whose insomnia has been lilting its way through the room all night.

"Can't sleep?" More a dull observation than a question, it is enough to pause the wandering tune from the far bed.

"Mm. I've got too many ideas, un. Going off in my head like fireworks…" His own phrasing pleases him; Sasori catches the glint of a smile, cut in profile as the sculptor voices his affliction to the ceiling. "…Un." How anyone can be so vibrantly awake at this hour is beyond him, but this quirk of Deidara's nature has long since been accepted, as natural as his trailing diction or his optimistic way of being impatient. He shifts, a hand laying over his eyes – whether he has any biological need for sleep any more is anyone's guess, but it's become just as addictive a habit as it would prove to be for any flesh-and-blood being, and its interruption is no more pleasant for him than for anyone else.

Except Deidara himself, perhaps. Deidara, who seems at his best at these ungodly hours – whose chakra, Sasori's noticed, actually spikes when he's been up all night, and who stretches languidly in bed now with a heavy sigh. His fingers twitch restlessly, the motion catching the periphery of his cohort's sight and offering a less abstract explanation for tonight's sleeplessness – the ideas 'going off' in Deidara's inscrutable mind are inspirations, waiting to be shaped in reality. He is full of little quirks like that, little habits and tics; it is to Sasori's comfort that their meanings never vary, and so he's managed to learn that vocabulary. Fluent in Deidara. There should be some kind of certification for that, he muses. The sigh has no sooner faded from the air than it's replaced with the aimless, wordless tune from earlier; it is becoming increasingly clear that as long as those mental fireworks are allowed to continue, neither of them is getting any sleep.

"Why don't you get up and work some of them out, then?" The suggestion, offhandedly resigned, is met with a predictable eagerness; Sasori knows as soon as Deidara replies that he'd been waiting for just those words.

"Yeah? I can't work so well in the dark though, un…The light won't bother you, Sasori-danna?" He is thoughtful, at least. His partner will concede that much. There's no doubt in his mind, nor has there ever been, that the humming and sporadically annoying fits of surreality are unintentional – that Deidara, for whatever else he may be, is a decent enough person.

"It's fine," he murmurs, stifling a yawn, and with no warning beyond a brief rustling of sheets the room is suddenly alive, raw with fluorescent light and other, more intense forms of energy. The fingers across his eyes shift, first to block out the sudden assault on his retinas and then, when the dots have cleared from his vision, to allow a slitted glance to pick out the irrepressible artist at the desk beside the bed. On the desk, to be more accurate. Settled comfortably atop it, legs crossed and body bent double to rifle through the single drawer beneath him – they've been staying at this little inn only a few nights now and already Deidara has moved himself in, tucking scraps of clay into odd places just in case the urge to create strikes. And it has – the evidence, however, never sits on the nightstand or on the desk for long before its creator's other great impulse strikes and the materials are rather forcefully recycled.

"Bang," he'd said the other day, perched atop the desk like that and grinning appreciatively at the clay that now spattered the walls like the aftermath of some great ceramic murder. "Art."

Sasori can't sleep with the lights on. He knows this, having attempted once to remedy a sleepless night with one of those sprawling midday naps Orochimaru always favored. In the end, he was left groggy and frustrated and, as Deidara had so inimitably put it, "really awful company for like a day or two, un". And so, rather than play at that futile game, he elects to watch his fellow artist at work. They argue about that designation sometimes, for Sasori is no more receptive to the idea of explosion as art than Deidara is to the concept of eternity. But for now, with the works-in-progress yet intact, there's no doubt that the blonde so intently carving away at that chunk of clay is as much an artist as the puppeteer himself. The usual burble of words and ponderous hums has abated, replaced by an intense quiet that only the creative process can ever coax out of the restlessly energetic sculptor. By now he's earned Sasori's full attention, perpetually sleepy gaze fixed on the rapidly elegant fluttering of skilled fingers; if he knows he's being watched, he doesn't acknowledge it, lost to his fabrication, and the time passes in unmarked silence.

It is only when the lump of clay has been reborn as a flower – a chrysanthemum, each spiky petal perfectly formed – that the spell descended over the room is broken, shattered by the triumphant voice of its unwitting caster.

"Ah! It's just about finished, un…" Just about. Deidara's pieces are always 'just about finished' when they're at what Sasori sees as their best. And then the grin, eager and uncomplicated, is turned on him – Deidara is asking permission to finish the piece. Partners they may be, but the dynamic of power is informally unshakable, and Deidara will defer if Sasori protests this all-important last step. This he knows, and considers taking advantage of – it is, after all, very late – but then Deidara has swung his legs over the desk's edge, feet swinging in the air and the hopeful smile making his eyes glitter. "It's a really good one, Sasori-danna. Even you'll think this one's art, un."

He can't resist the invitation – almost a challenge, isn't it? – and so relents, pushing himself to sit up with a nod.

"Show me." If Deidara was cheerful before, he's now bordering on giddy, springing from the desk to take up residence on the already-occupied bed, dropping to sit beside Sasori; it'd all be fairly startling, this quasi-innocent invasion of his space, were it not such a familiar component of his partner's personality. But it is, and so it is all taken in stride, eyes flickering to the earthen bloom Deidara holds reverently in his cupped hands. The proximity of something doomed to combust any moment renders him wary; visibly so, it seems, for Deidara's quickly reassuring him – and scooting only nearer.

"Ah, ah – this one's okay, un. It's not made for destroying."

"Then what---" But Deidara, briefly forgetting the pattern of respect, shushes him with a finger to his lips, nodding towards his creation.

"Look."

The words were true enough – this one isn't a weapon. Couldn't be, for there is no particular force behind its combustion, which comes on slow and delicate and reminds Sasori of the beginnings of a rainstorm. In perfect unison, the tip of each petal – and there must be a thousand there, each impeccably shaped – is sizzling, catching flame and crackling like a sparkler. He can feel the warmth of the air around it, dry and vibrant with the electricity of Deidara's chakra, and as he watches, the fizzling points of light begin to blur together –no, comes the mental correction, a few quick blinks affirming his vision. Not blurring, but connecting; weaving themselves into a web as the detonation moves slowly towards the chrysanthemum's cross-hatched center.

And there, just as it had crept inward in its formation, the detonation is seeping outward. Spiraling, cutting paths through the sea of spikes – he knows this is all happening rapidly, for there is no such thing as a slow explosion, but it is all so perfectly elegant that it seems to last an eternity. He catches sight of Deidara's face in the instant before the last of the tiny charges reaches its epicenter, and for that moment the pretty features in their wild, irrepressible grin are infinitely more fascinating than the blast transpiring in the palm of his hand.

It is over before Sasori realizes it, and what had been a perfect flower is now dust, clouding the air and sending the sculptor into a short succession of coughs. The instant his breath is back he has the smile Sasori will forever associate with blasts and destruction – Deidara's own interminable energy, realized in the form that best captures it. And again there is that hungry impatience, teeth capturing his bottom lip in anxious wait for Sasori's response. There is a silence first, broken only by the first chirps of the birds that welcome the dawn creeping towards their window, and then he smiles.

"You were right."

Deidara stops biting his lip.

"That was art."


End file.
